Author
Topic: Off Lighting/Color With 7D (Read 11059 times)

D.Sim

Pay attention to the background. Look at the shots you think are flat - dark dog against gravel, sand, and grass, brown bottle against light brown countertop. Then look at the ones you like - dark dog against snow, white clouds against blue sky, etc. Contrast is the key, and the lack of contrast between subject and background results in a flat look, even if you push saturation (FWIW, I prefer to push vibrance, as I think it adds 'pop' without looking overdone).

I think neuro hit the nail on the head here... so did a few others, Mt Spokane, wombat...

I disagree on not backlighting your shots though - it can work if you have fill flash - But that said, harsher/softer light considerations might have an effect, but personally its more towards the contrast between the subject and the background. The lighting might be having an effect on the way the fur renders, but without some angled light i don't think you can pull much out detail out of the shadows when its fur is that dark...

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Except everyone already mentioned there is also another "trick", which could help sometimes. On pics 2 and 3 the dog is on the first plan but all in shadow because unfortunately sun is behind him. In such a case if you can't recompose the shot, you should put more light onto the subject you shoot, in this case - on dog. You can do this by two ways: 1 and better by reflecting some sun rays onto the dog (but I assume you don't walk for walks with a dog with an assistant holding some silver foiled panel) and 2 and worse use a flash, even the one built in camera.This way you could avoid somehow such a difference in lighting between first plan and background. This funny btw and not natural to use additional source of light in such a sunny day, but this is exactly how it works

The other thing is shooting in RAW mode rather not jpg. You can later do much more with the photo than with jpg and rescue the situation somehow if you care about the shot. In Lightroom, Camera Raw or even Digital Photo Professional (Canon's) you can leverage levels by pushing "shadows" and pulling "lights". Even in jpg you could work with tone curve. On 10th photo (next to last) you have bright sky and dark ground. In such a case pros use sometimes special filters cutting off some of the upper half of the frame. If not an usual polarization filter helps. BTW this is difficult to properly exposure.

Except everyone already mentioned there is also another "trick", which could help sometimes. On pics 2 and 3 the dog is on the first plan but all in shadow because unfortunately sun is behind him. In such a case if you can't recompose the shot, you should put more light onto the subject you shoot, in this case - on dog. You can do this by two ways: 1 and better by reflecting some sun rays onto the dog (but I assume you don't walk for walks with a dog with an assistant holding some silver foiled panel) and 2 and worse use a flash, even the one built in camera.This way you could avoid somehow such a difference in lighting between first plan and background. This funny btw and not natural to use additional source of light in such a sunny day, but this is exactly how it works

I totally agree. In the pictures were the dog doesn't have much pop, you don't have any light on the dog's coat. you need to reflect light into his coat, use a flash, or overexpose your image.

Color will vary slightly from camera to camera and scene to scene, especially depending what you have your saturation ratings at and such. Even professionals have a tough time with color at time. If you really want to nail color, you could carry and expo disc, shove it on your lens before shooting in a scene, run a quick custom white balance and you're good to go until you change scenes/lighting/etc... Basically your camera is trying to figure out in your scene what 18% gray is, and if it cant figure it out, it will do it's best guess. Even us professionals carry gray cards with us, or expodiscs, or gray discs, whatever that we could shove in front of the camera before shooting a series of shots. If you're more of an auto color guy, you can keep it on AWB and pray it works well or try to best match your scene such as cloudy, flash, tungsten, etc... Also making sure you nail exposure could depend on color fidelity, richness, and consistency.

Color will vary slightly from camera to camera and scene to scene, especially depending what you have your saturation ratings at and such. Even professionals have a tough time with color at time. If you really want to nail color, you could carry and expo disc, shove it on your lens before shooting in a scene, run a quick custom white balance and you're good to go until you change scenes/lighting/etc... Basically your camera is trying to figure out in your scene what 18% gray is, and if it cant figure it out, it will do it's best guess. Even us professionals carry gray cards with us, or expodiscs, or gray discs, whatever that we could shove in front of the camera before shooting a series of shots. If you're more of an auto color guy, you can keep it on AWB and pray it works well or try to best match your scene such as cloudy, flash, tungsten, etc... Also making sure you nail exposure could depend on color fidelity, richness, and consistency.

Although I find it more convenient to search on the scene anything white and later in PP adjust WB to this sample. Everything with WB works until there are consistent light sources (remember my adventures on the snow in the evening:) )

Color will vary slightly from camera to camera and scene to scene, especially depending what you have your saturation ratings at and such. Even professionals have a tough time with color at time. If you really want to nail color, you could carry and expo disc, shove it on your lens before shooting in a scene, run a quick custom white balance and you're good to go until you change scenes/lighting/etc... Basically your camera is trying to figure out in your scene what 18% gray is, and if it cant figure it out, it will do it's best guess. Even us professionals carry gray cards with us, or expodiscs, or gray discs, whatever that we could shove in front of the camera before shooting a series of shots. If you're more of an auto color guy, you can keep it on AWB and pray it works well or try to best match your scene such as cloudy, flash, tungsten, etc... Also making sure you nail exposure could depend on color fidelity, richness, and consistency.

Although I find it more convenient to search on the scene anything white and later in PP adjust WB to this sample. Everything with WB works until there are consistent light sources (remember my adventures on the snow in the evening:) )

I used to shoot like that for the longest time... and it worked well 90% of the time. In the end, i learned to really nail custom white balance as much in camera and it cuts my post production time dramatically. I still do heavy photoshop work when i find a photo i really think will sell well, but color balance is one thing i dont have to worry about.

my thoughtsthe screen is still way too oversaturated for my liking I think this is why your images look duller because you are editing on an oversaturated monitorwhen i did this calibration then view your images they all looked good

however I feel my monitor is too saturated I think tonight i might redo it but drop the red and blue channel gamma down further than the recomended 98%

I also feel that in the calibration section maybe trying a gamma of something different to 2.2 or 2.15 will be beneficial and might boost contrast. will need some trial and error here.

I also think I will redo with lower initial brightness as I keep my editing room quite dark.

Once I've had another go at this i'll post some more feedback. I dont want to spend $200 on calibration gizmo that wont work properly

With pictures 1, 2, 3, and the last one, the subjects are light poorly. try shooting with your subject not backlight. Try shooting at either earlier or later in the day. Get the sun shining on your object; point your shadow at the subject to know if it is light well.

What does subject not backlight mean?

Also I can't really control the time of day in those pictures, unfortunately.

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7 is a dull picture because there is no clear purpose to the image; when everything is on focus, nothing is in focus. You need the background to provide the eye a visual cue that there is depth to the scene. Use the 50 1.4 @ 1.4 as much as possible. It will help you develop this vision.

The purpose of 7 is to show what is there, I did not want anything blurred out for depth of field. Good tip, though.

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#8 isn't bad, but would be better if the foreground were either black or lighter.

#9 would be better with a better foreground.

#10 would be better if you had pointed the camera toward the ground a little more...

Hope this helps! What makes a good picture is not high saturation as much as it is subtle details as listed above; keep working at it! You are getting there!!!

Very helpful! Thanks.

Backlighting is when the light is coming from the back of your subject. If you expose for the entire frame, the subject will be dark. This can work well, if you desire to make a silhouette. Or, if you expose for your subject, you can make the entire background fade into white. Either can work, but an underexposed subject which is not black doesn't usually work.

i've redone the calibration i posted a couple more times this time i set the brightness down to 60% before doing the calibration and only put it back up to 90% afterI found going below 98% blue and red gamma gave wierd colour castsmy lightroom and photoshop look good now but safari and firefox colours are still out of whack (too saturated)oh well as long as the editing software is working properly